“Welcome, darling, this is going to be a night you won’t forget and I promise it will be the most fun you’ve had,” Mistress Cleo says as she winks at me and my friend.
The voluptuous Miss Cleo quickly swaps her flip-flops for black heels. There’s nothing understated about her ruby red lips and bright red hairdo.
Her den is hidden behind a gun shop. It's a renovated warehouse and only the faded mint green walls distinguish the face-brick building from other businesses in Wynberg, Johannesburg’s industrial epicentre. This is Fetish Haven, a kink and fetish paradise for those who are so inclined.
On the other side of the double garage roller gate, framed pictures of people in a variety of sexual positions hang on the grey walls.
Maree* is tied to a large black chair. She’s just had candle wax poured over her naked breasts.
If you saw Maree in the street, you’d figure she was a homemaker with a talent for pancakes
If you saw Maree in the street, you’d figure she was a homemaker with a talent for pancakes or a lift-club mom who is never late for school drop-offs and pick-ups.
The plump brunette is wearing black leather knee-high boots and by the look on her face she’s in ecstasy.
As Miss Cleo turns up AC/DC's Thunderstruck, a chiselled man spreads the 52-year-old’s legs and begins to fondle her.
Tonight is the club’s masquerade-themed Valentine’s dinner party and Mistress Cleo, a professional dominatrix, is playing host, DJ and chef for the night. On the menu is chicken breyani, her signature sticky beef stew, chicken à la king, prawn curry, rice and roti.
The after-dinner show cast is Maree, Prophet, a tattooed man with a well-groomed beard and dad bod, and a topless man introduced to me as “Papi”. He is wearing a white latex glove on one hand, the hand that’s pleasuring Maree.
The vigorous wrist motion sees him swapping hands, he quickly realises he’s not wearing a glove, puts one on and continues the strumming motion in sync to the rock music.
Maree arches her back and groans, Papi whispers something in her ear, her toes curl, she nods. At this point the “play” gets more explicit with various sex toys as props.
Soon the first of many shows for the night is over.
“The whole idea of a venue like this is to do things that you know you can't do at home. People that come here are couples needing to spice up their relationships, or single people that want to embrace their kink, like if they’re into being whipped or caned, or they’re into toys, whatever, it's a nonjudgmental space.
“It's where you can just be without worrying about what people say,” Miss Cleo says as she gestures to the triskelion spiral motif tattooed on her wrist, a symbol adopted by the BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism) community.
There are about 30 revellers who have paid R500 to be here. It seems the masquerade theme was lost on most guests and even the host herself isn’t wearing a mask.
It’s just after 9pm on a Saturday and many of the nine themed rooms have not yet been used. They can be booked at an hourly rate of R250. Mistress Cleo admits that the pandemic harmed her business and she was forced to drop her rates from R600.
“Kink is a luxury, it's not a necessity,” she says.
In the passage people are peeping through the window of one of the rooms, watching a couple having sex in the Voyeur Room, where the blinds have been raised for this exact purpose.
The main attraction in the swing room is the leather sex swing.
Down another grey passage is the medical room, kitted out with a medical bed, stethoscopes, an IV drip, cabinets, syringes and needles. Miss Cleo suggestively leans on the bed, grabs the stethoscope. The room can be used for medical play or role play; think doctor/nurse skits, but for adults.
“This past weekend we did a show. I didn’t allow my slave to shave for two months.”
She goes into more detail about acts performed on Maree, who also happens to be her slave. “She's an exhibitionist, my slave loves that. She's 52 years old and so we placed 52 needles around her breasts.”
The massage room is for sensual play, next to a dark room, lit with a single light in the corner, against the black walls. Here, anything can happen.
Each room has a basket of government-issued purple condoms, aqueous cream and a box of tissues.
Miss Cleo saves her dungeon and the transformation room for last.
In the transformation room there are rails of sexy dresses, high-heeled shoes and mannequin heads with neon wigs. This is heaven for cross-dressers, if they don't mind the whiff of sweat and feet.
“In your room, you get on your bed, you ‘zwoosh’ and it’s done,” says Miss Cleo. “Here you come, have a bit of fun, you can pretend to be other people.”
We get to “Lucifer’s Dungeon”. Miss Cleo's face lights up. This is the largest room in the warehouse, fully equipped with sex toys, whips, canes, ropes, mouth gags, strap-ons and a death wheel.
“It’s the most popular room. A lot of people are into toys, strap-ons, and cross-dressing. Pegging is very popular among heterosexual men… very,” she emphasises, referring to a routine involving a woman penetrating her partner with a strap-on sex toy.
In South Africa, we are no more conservative than anywhere else in the world
— Clinical psychologist Bradley R. Daniels
Clinical psychologist Bradley R. Daniels says there is a perception that South Africans are relatively strait-laced. “People often make the comparison that America is more open sexually, and to their sexuality. But in SA, we are no more conservative than anywhere else in the world.” .
In the Showmax documentary series, Sex in Afrikaans, Daniels explores aspects of sex and sexuality with four Afrikaans couples and two single people.
He also conducts interviews with sex workers, owners of adult shops, swingers, dominatrixes, a cross-dresser and a dungeon master, to name a few. The show uses this seemingly conservative group to explore the myth that South Africans are staid when it comes to sex and sexual practices.
In the series, Daniels takes participants to Fetish Haven to see for themselves some of the services Miss Cleo offers.
Back at the masquerade party, a woman in red leather pants and a purple mask with lace and pearl detail is chatting to Prophet at the bar. Mbali*, who has been in the lifestyle for a while, is summoned by Miss Cleo to speak to me. The bald woman brushes up against me and places her hand on my leg.
Interracial couple Riyaad and Ashely are regulars. They are the duo other guests got to watch in the voyeur room. They’re also swingers, like Mbali, but she’s known as a unicorn, because there aren’t many single swingers.
During the day Mbali runs a catering company in Thembisa and on weekends she’s often at Fetish Haven.
A female master leads her slave to the table on a leash. The slender man is dressed in a provocative French maid outfit, with a ball gag and a mask. They sit at the same table as Prophet, a self-proclaimed sadist and BDSM master whose female slave serves him dinner on her knees.
I do everything from A to Z. Needles, pins, hooks, hitting people until I draw blood
— Prophet, a self-proclaimed sadist
Prophet, 53, also features in the docuseries. He tells viewers: “As a sadist I’ve been in the lifestyle for 17 years. I do everything from A to Z. Needles, pins, hooks, hitting people until I draw blood.
“It’s always in a safe manner, always researched and practised. There are people who are masochistic and they’re looking for extreme pain and as a sadist it’s very exciting to get those masochists for a play. It also improves my skills, I enjoy it, it’s a release for me as well.”
Like Prophet, Miss Cleo is an extreme mistress, specialising in pegging, toilet services and humiliation, skills she picked up in Europe. But it was an Austrian client who introduced her to BDSM back when she was still a call girl.
“One of my client’s, Werner, introduced me to it. Then I started learning and that’s what I did after that. I stopped doing full treatments,” she says, using a euphemism for sex.
“I just did BDSM and I loved it. They’re the best clientele. I never had drama, they’re fantastic, awesome people,” Miss Cleo says.
Having started in the industry almost 28 years ago, Miss Cleo, or Miss Vee as she’s also known, first started working as a call girl in Cape Town.
Born and raised in Kimberley, she moved to Johannesburg in the 1980s to pursue a singing career. Jobs and singing gigs were easy to come by. Her day job was working as a receptionist and at night she sang. After a bad break-up, Cleo and her then three-year-old son moved to Cape Town. There, jobs were scarce and salaries for a woman of colour were low.
A new massage parlour in need of a part-time receptionist in the evenings was her last option. It seemed perfect because she could work other jobs during the day and take care of her son.
“Then they had nobody doing massages so I started doing massages and I liked it. I thought well, this is not a bad thing to do. It was just regular massages, and then it got more complicated.”
She laughs and now the conversation turns to “happy endings” and special massages. She has always been honest with her family about what she does. Her mother was the first person she called when she decided to enter the industry.
After moving back to Johannesburg she bought a house in Yeoville from which to operate and later rented another house in the same area. Later she moved to Cyrildene and Bedfordview. She’s never worked the streets, and has a strict recruitment policy.
“This was in the 1990s, that’s when I was really doing well. I was the girl. I never hung out with girls in the business. I never went out and looked for clients; my clients were solely from my ads. I used to place adverts in The Star and The Citizen, that was the best place to get clients.
“I used to have girls but I never worked well with girls. It’s too much effort because it's drugs and I don’t deal well with that,” she says.
Since opening Fetish Haven in 2016, Miss Cleo says she’s seeing more people getting into the swinging and BDSM lifestyle. “A lot of people are more open to it. A lot of people want to try it, because it really does save marriages,” she says.
The Grand is a more conspicuous strip club in Rivonia, easily recognisable by the pink and blue florescent lights. The opulent white building is conveniently situated between an adult shop and the Hotel on Boulevard. Perhaps not so convenient is the Rivonia Primary School 260m away.
The entrance fee is R1,100 per person. This includes a five-star buffet featuring oysters, a sushi bar, curries, stews, pasta, meat and a salad station.
It’s a Thursday night and sadly the ribs for which the club is famous aren’t available. But dessert makes up for it, with an assortment of chocolate brownies, milk tartlets, red velvet cake, macaroons and baklava.
After a meal, patrons can relax in the booths where an older Asian man and woman offer neck and back massages.
The dancers each take to the stage, showcasing their moves using the two poles, humdrum dancing to RnB and pop songs.
Coco* and Athena* have marked their targets for the night. Greeting me like we’re former high school mates is part of their routine. In other sections of the establishment three Chinese men each have a topless dancer grinding on their lap as they caress their breasts.
Similar scenes are taking place in other areas.
Coco takes me on a tour, showing off the private booths upstairs and the jacuzzi area where “anything goes”. Each booth has a leather corner unit, dimly lit with multicoloured strobe lighting.
Coco says cabinet ministers and an award-winning rapper are very familiar with her natural talents. She boasts about how well the rapper tips, making him “one of our best clients”.
“We have a separate section for ministers and high-profile people who need privacy when they come here,” Coco says, as we walk back to our seats.
Before the next round of drinks, Coco and Athena take their dresses off. In only her black and gold heels Coco grinds all over me. Using her body as a weapon she slaps me in the face with her perky chocolate breasts. Her nipple almost pokes me in the eye as I try to avoid her attempts at sticking it in my mouth. One of us isn’t doing this right.
“Welcome to The Grand, honey.”
Athena joins in the show. Grinding on each other, they then perform what looks like a rehearsed routine. The showstopper is their downward dog jiggle which sees Athena almost losing her blond wig. The boob battle has ended but not the dance. Coco’s pièce de résistance is to pretzel herself around my neck, her backside in my face. She looks over her shoulder and laughs and she gracefully dismounts.
Coco takes a sip of whisky, grabs a tissue from her purse and dabs the sweat on her face.
“I get to do what I love. I love to f**k, I love to dance and I love money. I get to do all of that here.”
• Not their real names.
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